Mexico City, May 12 (Prensa Latina) Cuba is willing to have a constructive and respectful relationship with the United States, and we see no reason why the current president, Donald Trump, would be opposed to doing so, said Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío.
In an interview broadcast last night on Mexican television channel 14, the deputy foreign minister pointed out that, naturally, “it would entail having to recognize that Cuba is indeed a sovereign state” to which it has the rights and prerogatives of self-determination.
“If the United States were only capable of doing that, I believe there could be a relationship, and if it were capable of addressing the interests, I would say strategic and that really concern the American Union as a whole, the United States society,” he said.
He alluded to the existence of people who have made a political career and have enriched themselves with the business of hostility against the island, but “they do not necessarily represent the feeling” of the Cuban community there, nor of the majority of the U.S. society.
The vice-chancellor expressed his conviction that if the majority of the people of that American nation were duly informed and fully aware of the nature of the policy of the government of that country against Cuba, of the harm it causes to the population, they would openly oppose it.
Regarding the position of the Trump administration towards the island, he pointed out the presence of a great influence of anti-Cuban sectors, and despite the fact that there has not been an open, declared pronouncement, they have already taken actions.
Among these, in addition to the ironclad maintenance of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington, is the inclusion once again of the largest of the Antilles in the unilateral list of states that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
At another point in the conversation, Fernandez de Cossio mentioned the aggressiveness against the island on the part of the current US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
“We don’t know what he may think, we don’t really know what degree of authority he has in the government, nor how he would respond to a decision of the president with respect to our country,” he said.
“But Cuba – he said – has no limitation to interact with whoever is the representative of the U.S. government, as long as it is a dialogue, a respectful exchange in which we clearly put our positions.”
He reaffirmed that his country is not asking for money from the United States, nor soft credits, nor donations, nor preferential trade treatment, but something very simple.
“That we be treated as what we are, which is a fully sovereign state, with the capacity and determination to build its own future in the way it understands it, not in the way the rulers of the United States understand it,” he emphasized.
“That is not too much to ask,” he declared, ”and that is the way Cuba relates to the rest of the world, the exception being the United States.
